Wednesday 10 February 2010

Bristol University professor has a bone to pick with Saxon queen

It must have been a lonely journey, as the two young sisters travelled through the night leaving behind the land they called home, knowing they would never return.

The year is AD929, and Eadgyth and Eadgifu, two Saxon princesses – the granddaughters of Alfred The Great, and daughters of Edward the Elder – have been sent away from the Wessex kingdom of their childhood, which is now ruled by their powerful half-brother King Athelstan.

In the kind of ruthless diplomatic move that would give him a place in the history books as the first true king of all England, Athelstan has sent his half-sisters to Germany in the hope that Otto, Duke of Saxony, will choose one to be his wife

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